Reflectionles grating couplers for Silicon-on-Insulator photonic integrated circuits

We propose a novel grating coupler design which is inherently reflectionles by focusing the reflecte light away from the entrance waveguide. The design rules for this reflectionles grating coupler are explained and the grating coupler design is investigated by means of 3D FDTD simulations for the case of a Silicon-on-Insulator based platform. References and links 1. D. Taillaert, W. Bogaerts, P. Bienstman, T. F. Krauss, P. Van Daele, I. Moerman, S. Verstuyft, K. De Mesel, and R. Baets. “An out-of-plane grating coupler for efficien butt-coupling between compact planar waveguides and single-mode fibers, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 38(7):949–955, 2002. 2. D. Vermeulen, S. Selvaraja, P. Verheyen, G. Lepage, W. Bogaerts, P. Absil, D. Van Thourhout, and G. Roelkens. “High-efficien y fibe -to-chip grating couplers realized using an advanced CMOS-compatible Silicon-onInsulator platform,” Opt. Express 18(17):18278–83, 2010. 3. A. Mekis, S. Gloeckner, G. Masini, A. Narasimha, T. Pinguet, S. Sahni, and P. Dobbelaere. “A grating-couplerenabled CMOS photonics platform,” IEEE J. Sel. Topics Quantum Electron. 99:1–12, 2010. 4. L. Zhou, Z. Y. Li, Y. Zhu, Y. T. Li, Z. C. Fan, W. H. Han, Y. D. Yu, and J. Z. Yu. “A novel highly efficien grating coupler with large fillin factor used for optoelectronic integration,” Chinese Physics B 19:124214, 2010. 5. X. Chen and H. K. Tsang. “Polarization-independent grating couplers for Silicon-on-Insulator nanophotonic waveguides,” Opt. Lett. 36(6):796–798, 2011. 6. X. Chen and H. K. Tsang. “Nanoholes grating couplers for coupling Between Silicon-on-Insulator waveguides and optical fibers, IEEE Photon. J. 1(3):184–190, 2009. 7. C. R. Doerr, L. Chen, Y. K. Chen, and L. L. Buhl. “Wide bandwidth silicon nitride grating coupler,” IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 22(19):1461–1463, 2010. 8. C. Alonso-Ramos, A. Ortega-Moñux, I. Molina-Fernández, P. Cheben, L. Zavargo-Peche, and R. Halir. “Efficien fibe -to-chip grating coupler for micrometric SOI rib waveguides,” Opt. Express 18(14):15189, 2010. 9. N. Na, H. Frish, I. Hsieh, O. Harel, R. George, A. Barkai, H. Rong, and Others. “Efficien broadband silicon-oninsulator grating coupler with low backreflection, Opt. Lett. 36(11):2101–2103, 2011. 10. D. Taillaert, P. Bienstman, and R. Baets. “Compact efficien broadband grating coupler for silicon-on-insulator waveguides,” Opt. Lett. 29(23):2749–51, 2004. 11. F. Van Laere, T. Claes, J. Schrauwen, S. Scheerlinck, W. Bogaerts, D. Taillaert, L. O’Faolain, D. Van Thourhout, R. Baets. “Compact focusing grating couplers for Silicon-on-Insulator integrated circuits,” IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 19(23):1919–1921, 2007. 12. A. F. Oskooi, D. Roundy, M. Ibanescu, P. Bermel, J. D. Joannopoulos, and S. G. Johnson. “Meep: A fl xible freesoftware package for electromagnetic simulations by the FDTD method,” Comput. Phys. Commun. 181(3):687– 702, 2010.